A vision from Squamish's not-so-distant sawmill history reappeared with the arrival of a large Seaspan chip barge docked in the Mamquam Blind Channel. The barge is being loaded with tons of material left on the old Interfor mill site to make way for Pridham Development Inc.'s Waterfront Landing residential neighbourhood.It is helping to clear about 130,000 cubic metres - or more than 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools - of waste that had been buried over the last 40 years in order to allow for the land's future development. Nearly 50 per cent, or 60,000 cubic metres, is wood material that the barge is taking to Howe Sound Pulp and Paper in Port Mellon to be recycled.Local organic recycling company Triack Resources Ltd. recently finished excavating the mass of waste. The company started loading the barge this week after seven months of digging, testing and sorting into large piles. The process uncovered all sorts of materials. Some of it is junk but most of it can be put to good use, said Triack president and manager Dave McRae."Anything that would have happened at a sawmill went in that hole in the ground for 40 years," he said."And it was everything: it was steel and car parts and rocks and concrete and rubber belts and tires. You name it, it was buried in there. It was literally a dump."The wood waste is not the only material that can be reused. There is 30,000 cubic metres of topsoil that will be distributed to local landscapers. And about 4,000 cubic metres of rock aggregate and 500 tones of scrap steel had to be sorted by hand.Meanwhile, the approximate 60,000 cubic metres of hog fuel should all be in Port Mellon by February. But because the wood absorbed so much moisture over the decades it has to be blended with higher quality wood material from Triack's other sites. McRae estimates 70 per cent of every barge load sent to Howe Sound Pulp and Paper will consist of the higher quality wood material. It's up to Squamish Tugboat Co. to guide the barge for the 27-km, three-hour journey to Port Mellon, the only remaining pulp mill running in the area. The sale of the material helps with the cost of the remediation project necessary for Pridham to transform the land along the Mamquam Blind Channel. Squamish Harbour Authority manager Bill McEnery is pleased to see the remediation project finally happen while providing local employment. "Finally the wood waste in the valley is going to be put to use instead of just being buried," he said. "And that's good because it will employ some people on the waterfront again."Longtime resident and Squamish Oceanfront Development Corporation (SODC) board member Ted Prior was pleasantly surprised to see a Seaspan barge appear for the first time in what seemed to him like ages, he said. He lives near downtown toward Nexen Beach and grew accustomed to seeing the vessels regularly sending wood material out to area pulp mills like Woodfibre. "When I saw that Seaspan barge I thought that will be the last time we will ever see that in here again and they used to just live there. "They'd fill one, take it out, pull in another one [] and now the amount of soil and steel and material that came out of there is phenomenal."
